


no good deed (goes unpunished)

by thegirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, For Want of a Nail, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: Jaime doesn't wait around to keep the Iron Throne warm for Robert. Instead, he goes to check on the remaining members of the royal family.And he pays the price.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm basically just publishing things that have been sitting around on my computer for years, as snapshots into AUs. If anybody wanth to adopt any of these, they're very welcome.

Aegon is still wailing and howling and kicking with all the strength in his tiny body, and his cries sound painfully loud in the suddenly silent room, Rhaenys beside him whimpering in a ball but thankfully unhurt. The Mountain’s body was hacked in the shoulder, the leg, the side, the chest and finally, fatally the skull but that final blow had come too late.

And now Jaime Lannister, young Jaime Lannister she’d promised herself she’d protect as best she could from the horrors of court, lies dying on the floor, the Mountain’s sword sticking through his chest and coming out the other side. His lips are painted bloody red but beneath that they were deathly pale.

“You saved us,” she says and falls to her knees beside him, hands hovering over the mortal wound. She already knows there is nothing else to do. Nothing else she can do. Nothing anyone can do.

“My- my duty-” he splutters and on instinct she runs a hand through his pale blond hair, matted to his face.

“And you did so well,” she hushes him, aware that if he hadn’t come she and Rhaenys and Aegon would be dead, instead of the two men sent to kill them, “they will sing songs of your bravery, my white knight.”

Elia thinks he smiled at that, but she can’t be sure, a waxy quality coming to his skin.

“Cer-” he tries to say but instead coughs up more blood, “Cers- tell- love-”

“I’ll tell her,” Elia promises, “I’ll tell her.”

“Cer- Cersei.” He says, determinedly, and for a moment Elia sees a forceful glint of youthful immortality in his eyes, thinks perhaps he will pull through, perhaps he will recover, perhaps just once a good man will survive, perhaps he will tell his twin himself that he loves her, and Elia can’t think of anything sadder that the boy is so young that the only love he has is that for his sibling and not for some special lady-

Jaime Lannister’s body goes limp, and behind her Rhaenys begins to cry softly. Elia wants to cry with her.

* * *

She drags the bodies into Rhaenys’ adjoining room while telling her daughter to hide under the bed with Aegon and not to get out unless she tells them to. She kicks and pushes and pulls the Mountain, the beast of a man’s prone form barely squeezing through the door.

She is sweating and panting and her hair has come out of her bun, but finally the monster’s body lays next to his fellow failed assassin’s cadaver.

Elia thinks, for a moment, of bring Jaime’s body there too, but then realizes she can’t leave him alone with his murderers, with those vile men. He deserved better than that. So she heaves his cooling corpse onto the bed and covers his face with the bed linens.

She couldn’t have him staring at her with those damning green eyes.

 _We could have been married,_ she thinks suddenly as she pulls herself under the bed to stay with her children as footsteps begin to thunder down the corridors outside the room, remembering the long ago friendship between her mother and Joanna Lannister, and the plans they had hatched together to map out their children’s futures – the plans that never came true, _we could have been in Casterly Rock now, safe, and nobody would be dead._

Tywin Lannister had turned them down. His daughter deserved a prince. His son deserved a lady. But Elia had married the prince, but what had it brought her? Lord Tywin lost his heir twice, to both the kingsguard and to death, and Cersei Lannister had nothing now - no prince, no twin, no crown. What was the point? What was the point of it all?

Elia laughs whilst crying into Aegon’s fine, white head of hair.


End file.
